Indigenous children should go to boarding schools: Langton

Updated
February 26, 2013 23:32:00

Professor of Australian Indigenous Studies, Marcia Langton, is calling for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to be taken out of their own communities and sent to boarding schools in order to remove them from poverty and give them a better education.

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: A professor in Australian Indigenous Studies is calling for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to go back to boarding school rather than learn in their own communities.

Professor Marcia Langton says far from creating another Stolen Generation, it would lift Indigenous communities out of poverty.

Professor Marcia Langton, an expert in Indigenous Studies, is calling for Aboriginal students to be moved from their communities to boarding schools and city public schools to escape poverty. The dividend would be a better education.

Professor Langton says it's nothing radical, rather an idea that many Aboriginal families are already embracing.

MARCIA LANGTON, AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS STUDIES: It's quite wrong to refer to this as the Stolen Generation, a new stolen generation, because Aboriginal parents willingly send their children to these schools, they want their children to have a good education. So the conditions are there for them to perform much better than the children who don't attend boarding schools. It's a tragedy to have to say that, it's heartbreaking, but those are the facts.

ELLESA THROWDEN: Professor Langton blames a chronic lack of resources and constant experimentation for the current failures in the system. And she says it's time to stop treating Aboriginal children differently to other students.

MARCIA LANGTON: The banner of culturally appropriate education covers a multitude of sins. And so for instance excuses are made for failure to attend schools, excuses are made for not including Indigenous children in the normal curriculum. And it's really an insult to our culture to say that second best is what people from our culture deserve.

ELLESA THROWDEN: Some of the realities of education in Indigenous communities were laid bare earlier this month when the Prime Minister delivered her fifth report into the Closing the Gap strategy which aims to improve Indigenous lives

JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER: I cannot conceal that these literacy and numeracy results are a source of personal disappointment.

ELLESA THROWDEN: NAPLAN results reveal only three out of eight literacy and numeracy outcomes for Indigenous students are on course to meet their target.

Professor Langton is urging education departments and schools to consider other approaches, including:

A federal program supported by states and territories to train more Indigenous teachers;

Flexibility in the timing of the school year;

Separate classrooms for boys and girls aged over 12 years; and,

Cross-cultural training for Aboriginal children and all children to be taught about Aboriginal history and culture.

While these ideas don't appear too controversial, removing students from their communities to get an education is something that's so far only had the backing of philanthropists and big business.

Would it be a brave government that would embrace such an idea, given what's happened in the past?

MARCIA LANGTON: I think both sides of politics have warmed more and more to the idea. The main point though is that increasingly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are supporting this approach because parents see how the schools are failing their children.